Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus

(hăl'ĭkärnă`səs), ancient city of Caria, SW Asia Minor, on the Ceramic Gulf (now the Gulf of Kos) and on the site of the modern city of Bodrum, Turkey. Halicarnassus was Greek in origin, but there were Carian inhabitants. Except for a brief period in the 5th cent. B.C., the city was not intimately concerned with Greek affairs. As a Persian vassal it was ruled by tyrants and participated in Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 B.C.), but after the expulsion of the tyrants (460–455) it joined the Delian League. A dynasty of Carian kings in the 4th cent. B.C. was made famous by MausolusMausolus, d. 353 B.C., Persian satrap, ruler over Caria (c.376–353 B.C.). He was always more or less independent. One of the satraps who revolted against Artaxerxes II, he later allied himself with the Persian kings......Click the link for more information., whose wife, Artemisia, built him a magnificent tomb (see mausoleummausoleum, a sepulchral structure or tomb, especially one of some size and architectural pretension, so called from the sepulcher of that name at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, erected (c.352 B.C.) in memory of Mausolus of Caria......Click the link for more information.), considered one of the Seven Wonders of the WorldSeven Wonders of the World,in ancient classifications, were the Great Pyramid of Khufu (see pyramid) or all the pyramids with or without the sphinx; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with or without the walls; the mausoleum at Halicarnassus; the Artemision at Ephesus; the.....Click the link for more information.. Alexander the Great conquered the city (c.334 B.C.). It was the birthplace of Herodotus and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

Halicarnassus

(Greek, Halikarnassos), in antiquity a major coastal city and commercial and cultural center in Caria in southwestern Asia Minor (present-day Bodrum in Turkey). The city was founded by Greek colonists from Argos (c. 1200 B.C.). In the fifth century B.C., Halicarnassus joined the first Athenian sea alliance. The city flourished during the first half of the fourth century B.C. during the reign of Mausolus, when it became the capital of Caria. In 334 B.C., Halicarnassus was conquered and destroyed by Alexander the Great, but it was gradually rebuilt. In 129 B.C. it became part of the Roman province of Asia. The city was known as Halicarnassus until the 15th century. It was the birthplace of the historians Herodotus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

Halicarnassus was known for the famous Mausoleum (the tomb of Mausolus, mid-fourth century B.C., architects Pythius and Satyrus and sculptors Scopas, Bryaxis, Timotheus, and Leochares). The Mausoleum combined the features of the architecture of ancient Greece and Asia Minor. (It was destroyed in the 15th-16th centuries and is known chiefly from the description by Pliny the Elder.) The Mausoleum was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The sculptures in the Mausoleum (the statues of Mausolus and his wife Artemisia and particularly the reliefs from the frieze depicting the battle against the Amazons, which are now in the British Museum in London) are among the finest works of Greek art from the fourth century B.C. The remains of ancient and Byzantine structures have survived on the territory of Halicarnassus.

Among the new voices promoting the theory first proposed by Dionysius of Halikarnassos is Graeme Barker and Tom Rasmussen who write: "Virtually all archaeologists now agree that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the 'indigenous' theory of Etruscan origins: the development of Etruscan culture has to be understood within an evolutionary sequence of social elaboration in Etruria".

The architectural sculpture from major monuments such as the temples at Bassai, Epidauros, Tegea, Mazi and Ephesos, or the tombs at Halikarnassos and Xanthos (in part three) are briefly outlined, with a few-choice photographs and line drawings.

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